This book was a pretty frustrating read. This is not going to be a positive review because while there are good parts to the book, it was either poorly written or co-authored by ChatGPT. I just wanted to give you a fair warning before you begin that I’m not going to recommend it to you, but you might still be interested in all the reasons why it was annoying.
The most frustrating part of this book is that it had so much potential. If the author had paid closer attention to some of the smaller details and used an editor, then it could have been a good story. I also wish they had bothered to tie up all the loose ends of the story at the end, which they did not do.
This book is very popular as a free download and has over 20,000 ratings and a 4.3-star average. How? I have no idea.
Book Description:
There is no way out but to find him before he kills again…
Book #1 in the bestselling Blake Pierce mystery/thriller series, with over 400 five star reviews!
In the cornfields of Nebraska a woman is found murdered, strung up on a pole, the victim of a deranged killer. It doesn’t take long for the police to realize a serial killer is on the loose—and that his spree has just begun.
Detective Mackenzie White, young, tough, smarter than the aging, chauvinistic men on her local force, finds herself called in grudgingly to help solve it. As much as the other officers hate to admit it, they need her young, brilliant mind, which has already helped crack cold cases that had left them stumped. Yet even for Mackenzie this new case proves an impossible riddle, something the likes of which she—and the local force—have ever seen.
With the FBI called in, together, an intense manhunt ensues. Mackenzie, reeling from her own dark past, her failed relationships, and her undeniable attraction to the new FBI agent, finds herself battling her own demons as her hunt for the killer takes her to the darkest places of her mind. As she delves into the killer’s mind, obsessing over his twisted psychology, she finds that evil truly does exist. She only hopes it will not be too late to extricate herself from it, as her entire life collapses around her.
As more bodies turn up dead and a frantic race against time ensues, there is no way out but to find him before he kills again.
A dark psychological thriller with heart-pounding suspense, BEFORE HE KILLS marks the debut of a riveting new series—and a beloved new character—that will leave you turning pages late into the night.
Books #2–#8 in the Mackenzie White Mystery series is also now available!
Also available by Blake Pierce is ONCE GONE (A Riley Paige mystery—Book #1), a #1 bestseller with over 1,000 five star reviews on Amazon—and a free download!
The Writing
This is a somewhat typical mystery/thriller book. I picked up the audiobook for free from my library system to keep me entertained while I repainted my bathroom. The first thing I noticed is that this book is highly repetitive. In an early chapter, the author talks about how the lead character, Mackenzie White, is often disrespected by the men she works with and then goes on to restate this fact over and over. Everything someone says to her is followed up with how disrespectful, sexist, and insecure the men are. I’m not hating on the fact that these details are included but I kinda got it after the first two or three times and didn’t need every interaction with these characters, who are already stated to be sexist, to be followed up with a statement about how sexist they are. It’s very “telling not showing” if you will.
Oh, but icing on the cake? The author then almost immediately has the two men, Nelson and Porter, turn around and start gushing over how amazing she is and that she’s the best detective in the station after she barely does anything on the case (except for talk to a child of a victim and supposedly do a good job). So the two men who, the author cannot state enough, are extremely sexist and horrible and their minds can’t be changed, turn around and completely change personalities in the very next chapter. Wild.
There are a lot of extra details added in. For instance, when she orders a beer from the bar, the author writes down every single movement she makes. She sits the cup down, slides it across the bar, the bartender looks at her, he picks it up, he refills it, he hands it back to her, she drinks it, etc. Either the author was really trying to hit a word count or asked ChatGPT what normal human people might do at a bar. There are a lot of instances where we get a few paragraphs of description about unrelated things when one or two sentences would do.
Another annoying thing about the writing is how the author constantly contradicts themselves. At one point, Mackenzie returns to the scene of a crime and goes into the house. Then it says that she has a gut feeling that nothing is in the house and her gut is never wrong and people constantly tell her this. But she proceeds to go into the house anyway and wouldn’t you know it, almost immediately finds a clue and cracks the case (more on this -World’s Most Obvious Clue- later).
I am definitely not the only person who noticed how bizarre the writing is. Here is a review of this book on Amazon, with some nice quotes included. I also noticed these two inconsistencies and they had me scratching my head.
The Crimes
So, the crimes that are taking place in this book are pretty intense. Women, specifically women who work as strippers, are being tied to poles and lashed with a barbed whip until they die. That’s pretty awful. At the first crime scene, Mackenzie notices letters engraved into the backside of the pole and of course, her very sexist and awful partner (who is also very faithful to his wife and constantly praises Mackenzie) dismisses her findings and is like “Oh wow, numbers, big whoop” (I’m paraphrasing.) Obviously, these numbers are important. It makes zero sense that they would just coincidentally be on the poles. Then they show up again and again. The newspaper articles on the cases even include them and nobody can figure out what these mysterious numbers mean! What are the numbers, you ask?
N511 J202
Note: I listened to the audiobook so I have no idea how they are written down in the book, but it doesn’t make any mention of colons or hyphens (N 5:11, J 2:02).
And what are they? Bible verses. While they even state that some of the police officers are very religious, they inexplicably rule out religious motives right away – with zero evidence to do so. It seems like a logical step to just see if the man hanging women on a pole (somewhat like a cross, you might say) and engraving things into the pole might just be putting Bible verses on there. Maybe the way the words and numbers are written are somewhat scrambled, but I was listening to the audiobook. And when I heard about the numbers, my first guess was Bible verses. I doubt I’m alone on that. Of course, we also get the killer’s perspective and so we know that he’s religious but it is odd that the cops outright dismiss an obvious clue.
Also, I love that the killer includes an 02 in that one Bible verse because I have literally never seen anyone do that when writing one down (it would be J 2:2).
The Dark Side of Ghost Writing
So, I’m an author but I have also worked as a ghostwriter. I typically write non-fiction things like articles for magazines, blog posts, newsletters, and social media content. But I have also written fiction works, including ghostwriting short novels. Through my job, I’ve run into many people looking to make a quick buck self-publishing. The formula typically goes:
- Find popular keywords (to use in the title, description, etc)
- Use familiar plot points in all the books
- Use branded cover art
- Pay a ghostwriter as little as possible to write it (and force them to do their own self-editing)
- Profit?
While lots of people think of ghostwriting as someone getting paid five figures (or more) to write for celebrities, this is the most common type of “ghostwriting” available for people. People doing this often hire writers in other countries who are willing to work for less. I’ve seen rates as low as $50 for a 50,000-word book. If the writing is too rough, they might send it to an editor. As a side note, these clients are typically very awful to work with because the only thing they care about is trying not to pay you. So, they will nitpick and force you go back and rewrite things many times and you will often end up spending twice as long as you think on their projects because they don’t want to have to hire other people to do the other parts of the job like editing and formatting. They will try to gaslight you into doing it all (maybe even pressing publish for them!) If a writer doesn’t comply, they might not get paid at all. While I didn’t accept jobs that paid that little, even jobs paying $100 for 10,000 words can be challenging if they expect you to do every step from outlining to publishing and then sign an NDA and hopefully make money off of it. There have been times in my life when I didn’t feel like I could say no to jobs like this because $100 of guaranteed money was better than $0. Please know, I’m not dogging on the writers here – I know how hard it is to make it in this industry.
[To play devil’s advocate, if you are a writer just starting out and you can cope with this, it’s not the worst way to make a few hundred dollars. If you can write fast enough – say 10,000 words in 5 hours or less, then you might even make a decent wage. But if the client ends up being awful or you cannot keep up that level of production then it can be grueling. I’ve never really talked about this aspect of writing, but there you go. I would suggest writing non-fiction works if you want to write professionally or get in with a really good writer’s guild to find high-paying ghostwriting jobs.)
Maybe this is what is happening here. “Blake Pierce” is a pen name with dozens of novels and many series. It’s likely not just one person behind the scenes and if it is- they are truly prolific and can afford a better editor at this point.
Blake Pierce has a lot of readers and when you have a high volume of reviews and people can see that tens of thousands of others have read it, it’s easy to think the book might be good.
Sadly, instead of finding a good book, you end up with this book which was unfortunately just a waste of time.
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